Teresa
Human
Hunter
Oh my smile is fragile; my heart is held together with string and sellotape.
Posts: 57
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Post by Teresa on Sept 11, 2007 13:16:32 GMT
Tess' hands flicked the money into the register and the changed into the front of her apron - since she'd been told to keep it - of their own accord. Very little higher brain function was required from her for her occupation, well her daytime occupation at least. It was actually kind of mind numbing in a way and if it had been a little more restful it would have been just the perfect way to spend her time after a hunt, quietly earning money... Then again if she wanted to do that she guessed she should have gotten a job in a book store or something, but women who looked and acted like Teresa didn't work in book stores; there was an air of the unkempt about her and she wasn't about to change for anyone. Then there were the tattoos and the rock music, the faint , bitter smell of alcohol mixed with sweat that clung to her skin since she hadn't bothered to shower form the night before; perfect waitress material, nothing bookish about her. "No problem," Teresa found herself responding to the woman who had paid, watching as she picked up her coffee. She ignored the money dropped into the tip plate for the time being, it was hypocritical and sexist of her but the waitress was okay with accepting tips from women, men were a different story. As for her shift, she had some time to kill yet. Usually she broke for lunch and then it was up to her boss whether she was needed for the afternoon and today seemed like it might be a slow day. Given the way her stomach churned and her head pounded she was hoping to get the hell out of there in the very near future but the decision wasn't in her hands. Unfortunately. She glanced sideways to the guy who'd entered while she'd been serving the cops and before all of them had even left (Tess had never been the most polite of people) she was moving out from behind the counter. First she stopped at the table the jackass form earlier had tossed the elderly couple from, she scooped up the money he'd left behind and counted it. As suspected he'd left a tip. A condescending 'get yourself something pretty' tip. "Jackass." Teresa cursed under her breath, face betraying her disgust. God, if she saw him out and about around LA she'd pound him into the dirt. She dropped the tip into the platter on the counter, the collective tip jar that the waitresses usually divvied up at the end of a shift and wiped her hand on her corduroys, as if touching the money had contaminated her, then she headed over to the new customer who was playing with his cellphone on the table top.
"You good to order?" she asked blandly, standing at the end of the table, expression devoid of emotion as she drew out a pad and a pen from the front of her apron where 'Lorraine's' was written in faded cursive script.
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Thatcher
Rogue Werewolf
Vampire Hunter
Whatever pain may come, today this ends.
Posts: 90
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Post by Thatcher on Sept 11, 2007 23:59:24 GMT
Thatcher had heard her coming, seen her out of the corner of his eye, and of course, smelt her; the faint traces of grease on her faded apron, coffee and cooked foods of various kinds. Catching his spinning phone in one hand, on either side of the case, he looked up at her, taking in details as he did so, subtly but efficiently. From the faint bruising and almost softly scarred tissue of her knuckles to the haggard look in her general expression, there was instantly more to the waitress than met the eye, and for a flash of a moment, Thatcher knew he was more curious than he ought to have been.
Telling himself to move on before she suspected he was considering an option that wasn’t on the menu, he nodded slightly, and proceeded to order a full breakfast, with extra bacon of course, and a cup of coffee. “And a glass of juice,” he added after a moment, even going so far as to offer a smile, no matter how brief; that didn’t take away from the earnestness of it in its brevity.
The waitress seemed like the no-nonsense type, and he had been here before, enough times to know what was and wasn’t on the menu, so he didn’t have to waste her time. Still, after he had finished making his order, he couldn’t help but wonder what it was about her that had him so caught up; it wasn’t anything glaring, she wasn’t a wolf after all, and there was nothing screaming at him blatantly. It bugged him more than it should have, he knew, but he couldn’t help it. Often, it was the little things that helped in the end.
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Teresa
Human
Hunter
Oh my smile is fragile; my heart is held together with string and sellotape.
Posts: 57
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Post by Teresa on Sept 12, 2007 20:34:56 GMT
For a human it was more or less impossible to tell wolf from human without some hint betrayed by the subject of scrutiny, even with all the years of training under her belt Teresa couldn't tell a wolf at a glance - vampires were easier if only for their blanched skin, something a trained eye could pick on in the dark. Instead she looked for other things, body language was helpful, but not a sure thing, a lot of wolves didn't wander around LA unarmed either, but then again some of them did so that wasn't all that helpful, not to mention that nowadays a good percentage of humans were strapped too. It was usually a multitude of things that led Teresa to a conclusion on race. If she was actually paying attention that was.
The waitress listened and jotted down the order without looking up, only moving her eyes form the page when she repeated his order back to him quickly, returning the brief smile with a healthy - in her case - dose of sarcasm behind the expression; he seemed smart enough to pick up on the cynicism there, most customers arguably weren't when they had such a look levelled at them. "It'll be a few minutes," she concluded, eyes narrowing at him slightly as their gazes met. He was looking at her, she noted, not with the evident and irritating hunger that so many travel weary drivers, lonely middle aged or unhappily married business men did, but with definite thought behind the gaze. She wasn't the greatest people reader int he world, but she'd picked up one or two things in her time, apparently not enough to tell her what he was thinking though.
After a brief pause of apparent curiosity, or else a moment where she simply was caught in her own thought she said, gravely; "Apple or orange?"
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Thatcher
Rogue Werewolf
Vampire Hunter
Whatever pain may come, today this ends.
Posts: 90
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Post by Thatcher on Sept 14, 2007 1:24:14 GMT
For Thatcher, and all werewolves obviously, it was so much easier to distinguish one race from another, whether they by lycanthrope, vampire or human. It was all in the scents, whether they be subtle traces or something pungent. A wolf’s sense of smell was their second most powerful tool after their hearing, after all, and as a hunter, Thatcher had learned to trust his senses implicitly. Sometimes, he had no choice, because there was simply nothing else he could do in any given situation. His senses, and his reliance and trust regarding them, had actually saved his life on more than once occasion.
Catching the trace of sarcasm, he chose not to act on it. He could understand, in a detached sort of way, how she must be feeling, shut away inside in a café of all places serving breakfast to people who couldn’t be bothered to stick some bread in the toaster or fry their own eggs. It had to be tedious, to say the least, so he was giving her the benefit of the doubt, and besides, what could he really do? Be sarcastic in return? As prone as he was to doing just that, it wouldn’t get him anywhere apart from potentially kicked out, and he was hungry. Besides, it had only been a smile, and therefore nothing to get worked up about.
“Apple,” he returned after a moment’s consideration. It wasn’t an important decision, after all, just a matter of preference, and one that was easily decided for the ‘old’ werewolf. “Thanks.”
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Teresa
Human
Hunter
Oh my smile is fragile; my heart is held together with string and sellotape.
Posts: 57
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Post by Teresa on Sept 20, 2007 17:57:37 GMT
On and off Teresa had fleeting moments of jealousy towards lycanthropes, she didn't envy them the monthly agony of course, but the healing factor? The superior strength and resilience? Not to mention the near immortality if they played their cards right, all things that Teresa saw as pluses. Maybe it was something to do with the idea she had that she was never going to finish her 'mission'. She felt like the was in a jungle with a dinner knife instead of a machete, hacking at the weeds and rotten wood around her and getting nowhere. Every time she took one of the bastards out who had made her life so miserable three more seemed to surface. It felt endless. It felt like she was racing against the clock of her own mortality. "Sure," Teresa acknowledged and turned around tartly from the table, expression dour though she guessed that maybe she was thankful for the lack of back talk.
Sometimes she welcomed it, sometimes she honestly couldn't be bothered and other times she didn't know either way. Teresa managed to confuse herself pretty easily.
Sliding behind the counter again she rolled her right shoulder as she reached up to stick the hastily written order onto the little chrome strip above the window to the kitchen. The waitress turned the thing around, called the order out and slapped her palm over the bell; the scent of frying eggs and bacon caused her stomach to turn again. God she wanted out of the goddamn diner. Actually she wanted more aspirin. Her headache wasn't budging. Teresa dug underneath the counter for a bottle of pills she knew was shoved back there somewhere; the girls on the late shifts got headaches from the strip lights frequently and usually left their painkillers down there when they stumbled home in the morning, bleary eyed and exhausted.
Pay dirt.
With an irritated flick of her fingers she turned and popped the cap of, she didn't care that she was 'exceeding the recommended dose', the pharmaceutical company could blow her for all she cared and as she poured out an apple juice she crunched down another couple of the bitter, white pills. Swallowing the last fragments as she walked back over to the table, she pulled a face at the disgusting way the aspirin tasted on the back of her throat as she set the juice down.
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Thatcher
Rogue Werewolf
Vampire Hunter
Whatever pain may come, today this ends.
Posts: 90
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Post by Thatcher on Sept 22, 2007 1:39:50 GMT
True enough, the one thing Thatcher never, ever complained about, mentally or otherwise, was the lycanthropic healing factor; it didn’t just regenerate torn flesh or broken bone or even lost blood, but it also eradicated any traces of conventional illnesses, such as colds and flu and anything else virus-related. It was certainly a bonus, no matter how you looked at it; never having to worry about coming down with anything so mundane was definitely a plus, and something that Thatcher would never take for granted. Well, as things went, getting a cold would have obviously been at the bottom of his list of priorities and complaints anyway, in the grand scheme of things, but still, it was good to know that he never had to give it any thought.
Little did either of them know, but their thoughts about vampires ran along the same lines. Thatcher, as adamant and focused and dedicated to his ‘life’s work’ as he was, knew there was no way in hell that he could ever get them all, and in a way, that angered him, because they had taken everything from him, and he could never destroy all of the life-sucking bastards in his own, twisted version of retribution. He had killed a lot of them in his time, a lot, but there were so many of them out there that even if he went from city to city, week after week, killing night after night after night, he just couldn’t do it. He wasn’t undead like them; he needed rest and food and to breathe. As much as Thatcher hated to acknowledge that he needed that, he did, and it stopped him every once in a while, if only for a short time.
Finding himself watching the waitress when she went back behind the counter, he saw her disappear below it for a minute and then come back up after slipping a pill or two into her mouth. The werewolf felt his mind racing, sluggish after sleep though it should have been and very much wasn’t; either the young woman had gone on what mortals nowadays called an ‘all-night bender’, or she had been up to, well, something else. He remembered the scar-tissue on her knuckles, and her brash but self-assured attitude, the confidence and coolness there, and he had to wonder. There was definitely more to her than met the eye, and as he diverted his gaze smoothly and discreetly when she started to come back in his direction, he couldn’t help but muse on the possibility that maybe, just maybe, they weren’t all that dissimilar.
“Thanks,” he said to her simply as she set the juice down, setting his phone aside at last after having spent the last several minutes turning it this way and that in his hands, from one to the other and back again.
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Teresa
Human
Hunter
Oh my smile is fragile; my heart is held together with string and sellotape.
Posts: 57
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Post by Teresa on Oct 16, 2007 17:05:13 GMT
Even the ability to fight off colds and flu would be a bonus, there was only so much a human body could take as punishment until the syptoms started to show, fatigue led to illness more often than Teresa liked, and while she'd become what people liked to call a 'pill popper', there was only so far that vitamin supplements could take you. It was only because of that awareness of her own frailty -beneath the cock-sure attitude- that she took the occasional night off to rest. However, it wasn't so much the fact that it stopped her hunting vampires for a while that pissed her off, after all vampires weren't her only prey, it was more the simple weakness of it. The audacity of her own body to say, "No more." wasn't something that she liked listening to. Swords didn't get tired, no weapons got tired, so why did she have to be different? She was a weapon after all, wasn't she? With a shrug at his thanks Teresa turned away and moved back towards the counter, taking and order for a refill of coffee as she went. A clammy hand swept her face as she went; she was still feeling rough from the nightmare and the residual hangover, still aching from the scrap from a few nights back, maybe her body was trying to get her attention, she was just drowning out the protests to another fight, another one night stand with whatever she could get her hands on. Pouring the coffee, her eyes glazed over, thinking back over the images that ran like one of those cheesy home movies in her head, all flickering images with a painful clarity that could only come from having lived them. Sudden anger flared through her gut, molten rage made her hand shake and her lips curl into a semi-snarl whilst she moved behind the counter, serving someone a danish pastry as she went.
Teresa very suddenly wanted to find one of her 'targets' to ram her fists into.
Behind her the bell went three times to alert her to the fact that her customer's breakfast was ready and it jolted her from her thoughts of bloody retribution, actually making her start slightly as she'd been stacking napkins in the lull of everyone in the diner having been served, or at least had their orders taken. The cook gave her a few words of admonishment which she rolled her eyes at to stop herself from just ripping his eyes out through the grubby little window; he had no idea who the hell he was talking to, it wasn't his fault he was ignorant to the fact that she knew at least fifty ways to kill a person, maybe more if she included not-quite-human persons.
Biting her tongue against the swear words that wanted out, Teresa grabbed a tray, loaded the plates on it with a clean, upturned coffee cup and started back to the guy waiting in the booth. "Full breakfast, extra bacon and a coffee." she stated, starting to set the trays out with no trace of the previous anger vibrating down her arms, it was all inside, all stored up for later. At some point she had made the choice that it was time to start looking for another one of her 'uncles' and the thought gave her a grim satisfactionin thinking that one of them was out there with his egg timer coming close to empty and he didn't even know it.
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Thatcher
Rogue Werewolf
Vampire Hunter
Whatever pain may come, today this ends.
Posts: 90
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Post by Thatcher on Oct 20, 2007 18:14:06 GMT
Thatcher wasn’t like some werewolves he had met in his time, the ones who were arrogant and took their healing abilities and endurance for granted; he knew what it was like to be human, remembered it as if it hadn’t been over four centuries but rather only days, so he knew how and why to appreciate what he had now. It had been a gift in the literal sense, given to him by someone who had seen something in him that reminded them of the freedom they had once had and subsequently lost. After that, it had felt like a misplaced sense of new being, something he couldn’t understand and couldn’t live with, not without his family…
But he had pushed through it, learned what he could; tested his limits and what the lycanthropy did for him in terms of strengths and weaknesses. As a hunter, he had always targeted vampires, so the world of werewolves had been a mystery to him, one that he had had to unravel on his own, with little help. Thatcher had actually preferred it that way. It had made him stronger after he had lost everything; it had rebuilt that shattered strength within him, and given him a new sense of purpose, and it was truly a weapon he could use, especially now, with all the ins and outs explained within him. He had a harmony with the creature inside, and they knew how to use their twin sides to benefit one another, man and wolf alike.
While the waitress had been gone, he had been watching his phone, not really paying it attention but wondering if maybe he ought to try and call around and find out some new information, about any gangs or ‘nests’ that might be hiding around the city, on either side of the territory lines. He didn’t care if he bothered either of the Alphas, one or the other, because he wasn’t loyal to them, and therefore, didn’t have to obey them; they weren’t his Alphas, and never would be. The wolf within him was too dominant to allow him to follow another, and that solidarity and self-reliance suited him just fine. Would it be nice to have someone to watch his back from time to time? Sure. But with that reassurance came a duty that he didn’t care to take on. They could watch his back, certainly, but would expect the same in return, and he couldn’t deviate from his mission in order to save someone else’s ass. He spent too much time keeping his own out of trouble, as it was.
The return of the waitress took him out of his reverie, and he looked to her as she set his breakfast down, thanking her again, and briefly rubbing a hand over his face to truly get himself out of ‘nostalgia mode’. It never did him any good. As he lowered his right hand to the table, however, the light caught his ring, and with a glance at it, the memories ignited again. Thatcher did his best to ignore them for now, gave the waitress a faint smile, and tried to concentrate on eating his breakfast.
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Teresa
Human
Hunter
Oh my smile is fragile; my heart is held together with string and sellotape.
Posts: 57
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Post by Teresa on Nov 10, 2007 23:28:50 GMT
"No problem. Shout if you need anything." The inflection of her words clearly betrayed the fact that she would not react well if he shouted for her attention at all. Diners were expected to sit down, shut up, eat, pay and get out. That was that.
As she turned to make her way to another customer shouting made its way into the diner. A couple of the patrons looked up and over the counter out the back. Lizzie looked at Teresa nervously and the dark haired waitress met her gaze before looking back over her shoulder and rolling her eyes. Probably a couple of crack heads fighting over the last line. That or a couple of drunks fighting over a box, or some other shit from the belly of the beast that was the great unwashed masses of Los Angeles. If it wasn't such a perfect place to blend into those masses then Tess would have moved on long ago. Sadly she didn't really have the choice to relocate. Not if she valued her anonymity. For her line of work, for her mission, that anonymity was essential. Just another thing she had to grin and bear. Minus the grinning.
"Typical." She breathed, bored and annoyed. Just what she needed to make an already crappy day into a pointless one; she knew she should have called in sick, shoved her one night stand out the door and crawled back into bed with a thirty-six pack of aspirin and stayed there until dark. Then she could have gone out, trawled the clubs for any vampires thinking to take advantage of one of the Silicon Princesses -though she was inclined to let the fangs have their fill of the Barbie dolls- and stake the bastard into oblivion. After a little play time first. Breaking bones and gouging eyes. What more could a girl want to brighten her day?
Lizzie hurried up to her by the 'full-breakfast-extra-bacon-and-a-coffee' customer's booth, nervously twisting a napkin in her hands: "Tess-"
"I'll deal with it. Hold down the fort." Teresa waved her away in apparent annoyance as her other hand cinched the knot of her apron undone. Tearing the scrap of cloth off, as well as her name badge, she dumped them on the counter and then disappeared into the back of the diner and towards the back exit.
Continued in Alleys and Streets; Back Alleys.
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Thatcher
Rogue Werewolf
Vampire Hunter
Whatever pain may come, today this ends.
Posts: 90
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Post by Thatcher on Nov 22, 2007 19:20:40 GMT
Thatcher watched the waitress head off even as he picked up his coffee, eyes narrowing slightly at the purposeful, even enthusiastic way she pulled off her apron and badge. Part of him thought about wandering towards the counter under the pretence of asking for some condiment his table would magically ‘not have’, but shaking his head slightly, he reminded himself it was not only none of his business, but too damn early in the morning to be meddling in the affairs of others. Besides, he couldn’t very well follow the waitress out the back to wherever she had gone, if the sound of a closing door or two was any indication, and he wasn’t about to get himself kicked out of a perfectly good café for being too curious.
It was probably nothing, anyway.
He was here to eat, he reminded himself, and with a look down at his breakfast after he sipped his coffee, he set the mug down and got to work on actually eating, rather than letting his mind run over all sorts of topics, some welcome and others not. Thatcher made a point of not looking at the ring on his hand as he picked up his napkin-wrapped cutlery. Later, he told himself; later, if his brain was still whirring madly, he would allow the nostalgia that would practically cripple him and leave him slouched in a chair in his apartment, useless and weighted by memories and misery.
He wasn’t going to let that happen here, in a public place.
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